


Coming and Going

by alessandralee



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Yuletide 2015, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maya and Lucas certainly know how to make things complicated. But do they know how to fix them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming and Going

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perfectlystill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/gifts).



> I was hoping there would be some good Lucaya prompts in the Yuletide letters, and yours certainly didn't disappoint.
> 
> Thank you to [valkyrierising](http://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrierising) for looking this over.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Lucas asks, getting down on his hands and knees to search for something under her bed.

Maya spots his t-shirt hanging over her lamp, grabs it, and drops it teasingly on his back.

 

“There’s no ‘this’ to talk about,” Maya says quietly, as if making it harder for him to hear her will make it less likely for him to press the issue.

“There has been a ‘this’ three times this week,” he reminds her.

Like she could forget. Like it hasn’t been a huge distraction, a weight on her shoulders.

If anyone else made her feel like this, Maya would just take a few days off from the gallery she’s working at, and catch a train up to Connecticut to vent to Riley.

But this is Lucas, not just some guy she’s casually seeing who wants to get more serious.

And sure, both Maya and Riley have long since moved on from the days of their mutual crushes on him. It’s been almost ten years. But that doesn’t mean Riley’s unbiased when it comes to Lucas.

He’s too kind, and protective, and upstanding for Riley to be unbiased. He’s one of her best friends.

It’s the same reason Maya hasn’t called Farkle or barged into Zay’s apartment and demanded that he help her sort her head out.

If anything, she’s going out of her way to hide this from everyone who knows Lucas Friar.

“I have to get to work, you have five seconds to say whatever it is you’re getting at,” Maya tells him.

Lucas sighs heavily and jerks his shirt over his head.

It’s pretty much exactly the reaction she expected.

Maya jumps into the shower to avoid watching him leave. There’s a part of her that considers asking him to climb down the fire escape, with the justification that it will keep him from running into one of her roommates.

But really it’s to push him away a little bit more. Enough for him to make the decision she keeps telling herself she’ll make… next time.

And she knows what those kinds of thoughts say about her.

\--

It really shouldn’t surprise Maya to find Lucas sitting in her kitchen when she gets home. He’s not the type to just let things go when they bother him.

The therapist she saw briefly during college would say that he’s dealing with his emotions in a healthy way.

There’s a reason Maya stopped seeing the therapist. Healthy always seemed a little out of her reach.

And as for how he actually got into the apartment, Maya’s starting to regret introducing both him and Zay to her roommates as a close friend.

Next time, she needs to find roommates who are less friendly.

She finds herself frozen in the doorway, a bag of Chinese takeout clutched in one hand.

“I assume you’re here to talk,” Maya says. The venom in her voice has less to do with him, and more to do with a long day at work, this situation in general, and the fact that this confrontation was completely unexpected.

Not that he can tell the difference. Not that she informs him.

Polite as ever, Lucas rises from his seat at her entrance.

But instead of a hug or question about her day, he says, “I just think we should figure out where we stand.”

Apparently the implied, ‘We stand in that gray area where we keep having sex we don’t mean to have, and then pretend it never happened only for it to totally happen again,’ just isn’t enough for him.

“I disagree,” she says in return, although even she has to idea what she means by that.

“What do you mean you disagree?” he asks, his voice switching that that soothing tone she’s heard him use on everything from farm animals to stray cats to crying ex-girlfriends.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Maya can hear the anger rising into her voice again. She doesn’t appreciate being treated like skittish livestock.

“Maya, we’ve been sleeping together for the last month,” he says. She can picture the date circled on his calendar as a deadline for getting her to talk about it. He doesn’t like loose ends or hanging threads, but unfortunately those are Maya’s specialty. “You won’t even acknowledge that’s happening.”

“So what? It’s not like it doesn’t have an end date,” Maya retorts.

Two more months and then he’s gone.

Lucas’s eyes widen in surprise.

She thought she was being flippant, but maybe she’s confessed more than she should have.

“Is that what this is about?” Lucas asks. “Me leaving?”

Maya shrugs, trying to play it off cool, “It’s why I don’t think there’s anything worth talking about.”

Lucas is quiet, which Maya thinks might be even more uncomfortable than having him hounding her to talk.

“I’m not sure what to say,” he eventually admits. “Vet school was always the plan. And I sent out applications when you were still in London.”

Maya knows this. Maya has spent the last three weeks reminding herself of these exact facts every morning when Lucas leaves her apartment.

“I know that,” she snaps. “I’m not asking you to stay, I’m just asking you not to make things more complicated.”

Lucas leans over the table to ask, “Is that what I’m doing?”

Maya doesn’t trust herself to elaborate without going too far, so she just nods.

She’s resettling herself in a city (and a country) she hasn’t lived in for four years. She’s trying to strike a balance between a full time job and her art. She’s trying to actually sell some of her art, the big pieces that mean something to her, not just the fun fanart prints in her online store.

She’s trying to start her adult life.

The last thing Maya needs is complicated. But she’s never been very good at avoiding it.

Right now, she’s doing damage control. She’s already going to get hurt, she just wants to make sure she can let Lucas leave in two months without completely falling apart.

But this, having him show up at her apartment demanding that they talk about feelings? That’s not helping her keep control of the situation.

“I think that things are already complicated,” Lucas tells her. “I think that things have always been complicated.”

She’s moved past that middle school crush, but into something way bigger than she can handle.

 

He’s not wrong.

But this isn’t the right time.

She came back, but he’s leaving.

Maya shrugs. He doesn’t have the right answer any more than he does.

It will probably never be the right time.

She thought she could get him out of her system, and move on with her life.

Actually, that’s a lie.

She was thinking that Farkle just moved across the country, Riley’s heading in that same direction as soon as she finishes her last few credits, and Zay has plenty of other friends to keep him busy. Lucas was the last bit of normal she had left.

And then they had sex.

“Listen,” Maya says, exhausted, “I don’t have the answers you want.”

Honesty is the best policy. That’s the exact kind of platitude that probably brought Lucas here tonight.

“So I think that we should stop this… whatever it is,” she tells him. “I will see you for that recital with Zay next week, but I don’t think I should see you alone.”

It’s a miserable alternative, but all her other options seem even worse.

Lucas nods and gets up from his chair. Maya busies herself with unloading the dishwasher, because it’s still hard to watch him leave.

She tells herself she’s doing the responsible thing. She’s being a mature, reasonable adult.

At least this way they’re preserving their friendship. In a few months they’ll start working their way back to how things were before. In a year she’ll be able to look at him without feeling a hurricane in her gut.

It’s for the best.

She’s still repeating that mantra to herself five minutes later when the front door opens. She doesn’t even notice.

“You know what,” Lucas says from the kitchen doorway. He’s stretched territorially across the center of if, so she can’t squeeze past him and out of the apartment. “We’ve been friends for almost ten years and you have never let me get the last word.”

Maya crosses her arms over her chest, “Seriously? You came back here to have this argument?”

“Yes,” Lucas says. She can tell he’s angry. “I’m sick and tired of not getting a say in this relationship. There’s two of us, you can’t just decide you want me and then push me away when things get difficult.”

“You should go,” she tells him, trying her best to sound angry and annoyed and anything other than scared.

He ignores her.

“I like you Maya,” he tells her. “A lot. I’m not going to say that other L word, because I’m trying not to completely freak you out. I know this isn’t convenient and I know it’s not the right time, but it’s the truth. And it’s pretty clear that you like me too. As a friend, as a roll in the haystack, but also as something more than both of those.”

It’s hard for Maya to swallow or move or do anything but stand there and listen.

“And I get that there’s a risk,” Lucas continues. “I know that I’m leaving and you’re staying and it could all end badly. But I’d like to try anyway.”

“And if I don’t want to?” her words come out weak and uncertain.

“Then I think I’m going to have to wait a whole lot longer than next week before I see you again.”

So that’s it. And ultimatum.

And all she can do is stare at him. Her mind is racing, but it’s not coming to any decision.

The little red numbers on the stove tick by five minutes as they stand in silence.

Lucas exhales slowly, “I guess I have my answer then.”

The moment he turns to leave, all the pieces slide into place. Maya’s indecision crumbles.

“Wait,” she says. “You really want to do this?”

Lucas smiles, “More than just about anything.”

It’s a short walk across the kitchen to him, but it’s a scary one.

“Even if it ruins everything?” she asks.

“It’s already ruining everything.”

He’s right. There’s nothing left to do but agree.

Maya rises to her toes and Lucas leans down to meet her. The kiss is familiar and new and Maya can feel her last bit of trepidation melt away.

They’ve done this before, but not like this. The last dozen or so times Maya’s been in his arms, she’s also been reminding herself not to get too attached.

There’s no point in doing that anymore. She’s not even sure she could.

Lucas lifts her onto the to the kitchen table for better access. Maya grips his shoulders and pulls him in closer as his fingers tangle in her hair.

“We should probably stop,” he says after a bit. “Before we get carried away.”

Maya nods. She was definitely about to get carried away, and it’s probably best if they each sleep in their own beds tonight.

“Do you work tomorrow?” he asks her.

“One-thirty to nine,” she says.

“Do you want to get an early lunch then?” he asks.

A date. How normal. How anti-climactic.

How promising.

“Sounds great,” she tells him.


End file.
